My Method: Writings and Interviews

``In my fields I try to persuade everybody to live adventurously,'' says Rossellini in one of the pointed interviews assembled here by Italian film critic Apra. This well-edited collection of conversations and writings reveals much about the great Italian neorealist director (1906-1977). The book charts Rossellini's metamorphosis from rich playboy who awoke belatedly to the evil of fascism to powerful moralist exposing the gratuitous cruelty, aggressive egotism, mindless conformity and spiritual vacuity of the postwar world. Rossellini talks freely about why he made specific movies, including Open City, Geramny Year Zero, Paisan, Acts of the Apostles, Stromboli and The Flowers of St. Francis. The final interview (1974) limns a self-described atheist who believed ``everything is political'' and viewed Western civilization as doomed. Photos. (Jan.)